Youth baseball is a race to nowhere.

Travel baseball under 12U is all about the parents. It has no bearing on how good your child will be post puberty.

Parents will always give some dumb excuse like "the competition is better" or "but he loves it". The travel industry is for suckers and it won't make your kid any better.

My kid's LL is competitive and includes a bunch of travel ball players. The best hitter in the league is a football player who plays baseball for fun. Travel ball parents hate him and work to keep him off All Stars. Reps don't mean anything. Some people are born with more talent and hand eye coordination.

Save your money. The only downside is you won't be able to post stupid pictures of your kid holding a ring on social media.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For 9U we spent about 3k plus some hotel rooms (although most tournaments were driveable within an hour or so, so we didn’t get a room).

At 9U you should be playing rec for $200/season. Kids can barely pitch at that age. Stop the madness.

They also play rec. travel starts at 8u and yeahs are formed. Do you think kids can just play rec a few times a year and then get on a travel team at 11u? No. At our high school, even done travel kids won’t make the team. It’s very competitive and baseball is about reps.

Yes, it’s definitely possible to wait for travel until 11u. Because that’s what we did. Now with varsity starter on WCAC team you would know. The travel ball industrial complex is powerful and it’s hard for parents to fight back. But fight back we must.

Good for your kid. He must be a stellar athlete. He’s not the norm.

Just throwing in another vote for varsity starter on a “baseball” school, committed, didn’t start travel until 12u. If you look at the rosters they’re mixed. It isn’t that rare for kids to have waited to do travel.

Baseball requires a lot of reps for a lot of very different skills. You can invest extra time and money in hitting/pitching coaches but the baseball IQ that comes with practicing situationals requires a team so whether it’s travel or something else, you need to make sure the other kids are on the same page as your kid. We needed to move to travel to find this.

Also, baseball can be incredibly painful when kids aren’t improving and constantly making the same errors. It can be amazing when everyone is improving individually and clicking on a team level. We felt travel was worth the extra money for that reason. For 13u—Pay about 3k/year for fall, winter workouts, spring season and that includes uniforms, a handful of tournaments, and paid coaches. Additional training adds up to something like 3k/year as well. It’s not cheap but when you compare it to what others are spending on camps or various other activities it’s very reasonable—especially because it’s what our DS loves to do.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s pretty hard to advance and win at Cooperstown, if you’ve been. It is a tournament after all. Agree that LLWS is also a wonderful tournament.

I don’t think this is true. Two teams I’ve known go to round of 16 and round of 8 out of 100.

By definition getting to round 8 out of 100 is hard! Just because you know some who have done it doesn’t mean it isn’t hard. That’s like saying “oh, it isn’t hard to make a million bucks a year. I know two people who’ve done it!” Still hard.

Well in fairness, I know a lot of people who make a million bucks a year, so I guess I’m very jaded.

I’m not sure that is jaded - I think that is isolated and bad at probability.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For 9U we spent about 3k plus some hotel rooms (although most tournaments were driveable within an hour or so, so we didn’t get a room).

At 9U you should be playing rec for $200/season. Kids can barely pitch at that age. Stop the madness.

They also play rec. travel starts at 8u and yeahs are formed. Do you think kids can just play rec a few times a year and then get on a travel team at 11u? No. At our high school, even done travel kids won’t make the team. It’s very competitive and baseball is about reps.

Yes, it’s definitely possible to wait for travel until 11u. Because that’s what we did. Now with varsity starter on WCAC team you would know. The travel ball industrial complex is powerful and it’s hard for parents to fight back. But fight back we must.

Good for your kid. He must be a stellar athlete. He’s not the norm.

Just throwing in another vote for varsity starter on a “baseball” school, committed, didn’t start travel until 12u. If you look at the rosters they’re mixed. It isn’t that rare for kids to have waited to do travel.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s pretty hard to advance and win at Cooperstown, if you’ve been. It is a tournament after all. Agree that LLWS is also a wonderful tournament.

I don’t think this is true. Two teams I’ve known go to round of 16 and round of 8 out of 100.

By definition getting to round 8 out of 100 is hard! Just because you know some who have done it doesn’t mean it isn’t hard. That’s like saying “oh, it isn’t hard to make a million bucks a year. I know two people who’ve done it!” Still hard.

Well in fairness, I know a lot of people who make a million bucks a year, so I guess I’m very jaded.

We didn’t do travel until 12u. I agree it’s harder to qualify but at the same point - many of the kids that qualified at 8 wouldn’t at this age.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s pretty hard to advance and win at Cooperstown, if you’ve been. It is a tournament after all. Agree that LLWS is also a wonderful tournament.

I don’t think this is true. Two teams I’ve known go to round of 16 and round of 8 out of 100.

By definition getting to round 8 out of 100 is hard! Just because you know some who have done it doesn’t mean it isn’t hard. That’s like saying “oh, it isn’t hard to make a million bucks a year. I know two people who’ve done it!” Still hard.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For 9U we spent about 3k plus some hotel rooms (although most tournaments were driveable within an hour or so, so we didn’t get a room).

At 9U you should be playing rec for $200/season. Kids can barely pitch at that age. Stop the madness.

They also play rec. travel starts at 8u and yeahs are formed. Do you think kids can just play rec a few times a year and then get on a travel team at 11u? No. At our high school, even done travel kids won’t make the team. It’s very competitive and baseball is about reps.

Yes, it’s definitely possible to wait for travel until 11u. Because that’s what we did. Now with varsity starter on WCAC team you would know. The travel ball industrial complex is powerful and it’s hard for parents to fight back. But fight back we must.

I agree with this...you can even wait until 12u especially if you have a competitive LL and are putting in the work on your own.

Maybe in Vienna or in another competitive LL. We don’t have that in Arlington.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For 9U we spent about 3k plus some hotel rooms (although most tournaments were driveable within an hour or so, so we didn’t get a room).

At 9U you should be playing rec for $200/season. Kids can barely pitch at that age. Stop the madness.

They also play rec. travel starts at 8u and yeahs are formed. Do you think kids can just play rec a few times a year and then get on a travel team at 11u? No. At our high school, even done travel kids won’t make the team. It’s very competitive and baseball is about reps.

Yes, it’s definitely possible to wait for travel until 11u. Because that’s what we did. Now with varsity starter on WCAC team you would know. The travel ball industrial complex is powerful and it’s hard for parents to fight back. But fight back we must.

Good for your kid. He must be a stellar athlete. He’s not the norm.

Anonymous wrote:It’s pretty hard to advance and win at Cooperstown, if you’ve been. It is a tournament after all. Agree that LLWS is also a wonderful tournament.

I don’t think this is true. Two teams I’ve known go to round of 16 and round of 8 out of 100.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For 9U we spent about 3k plus some hotel rooms (although most tournaments were driveable within an hour or so, so we didn’t get a room).

At 9U you should be playing rec for $200/season. Kids can barely pitch at that age. Stop the madness.

My kid does play rec as well (most travel teams require it at this age). But the kids in rec can goof off at times. My DS gets frustrated when other kids are digging in the dirt in the outfield while the ball rolls past.

Don’t get me wrong, I think there are valuable lessons to rec sports and it’s nice when they can be on teams with their friends. But some kids are really athletic, actually are decent pitchers who can throw strike outs at 9, and want a little more challenge. If that isn’t your kid that is totally fine. But OP seems interested and asked for costs so I shared. Luckily for my family 3k isn’t a particularity noticeable sum of money so I’m glad we can do this for our kid.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For 9U we spent about 3k plus some hotel rooms (although most tournaments were driveable within an hour or so, so we didn’t get a room).

At 9U you should be playing rec for $200/season. Kids can barely pitch at that age. Stop the madness.

They also play rec. travel starts at 8u and yeahs are formed. Do you think kids can just play rec a few times a year and then get on a travel team at 11u? No. At our high school, even done travel kids won’t make the team. It’s very competitive and baseball is about reps.

Yes, it’s definitely possible to wait for travel until 11u. Because that’s what we did. Now with varsity starter on WCAC team you would know. The travel ball industrial complex is powerful and it’s hard for parents to fight back. But fight back we must.

I agree with this...you can even wait until 12u especially if you have a competitive LL and are putting in the work on your own.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For 9U we spent about 3k plus some hotel rooms (although most tournaments were driveable within an hour or so, so we didn’t get a room).

At 9U you should be playing rec for $200/season. Kids can barely pitch at that age. Stop the madness.

They also play rec. travel starts at 8u and yeahs are formed. Do you think kids can just play rec a few times a year and then get on a travel team at 11u? No. At our high school, even done travel kids won’t make the team. It’s very competitive and baseball is about reps.

Yes, it’s definitely possible to wait for travel until 11u. Because that’s what we did. Now with varsity starter on WCAC team you would know. The travel ball industrial complex is powerful and it’s hard for parents to fight back. But fight back we must.

At 10U we are $1K per year, but the Head Coach is a parent (he played in college, asst. coach in college, wooden bat league, etc). A couple local-ish tournaments per year. Maybe 25 games in the spring and 25 games in the fall. Winter gym workouts in Jan/Feb, but they are local too -- not baseball academies. 3 jerseys and tons of swag -- helmets, cage tops, etc

Might be more like $1,300 next year as the kids are outgrowing uniforms.

Anonymous wrote:Pp here. Above expenses are 13u. 12u was a bit more on the team expense because of Ctown. Team did fundraising but it was a substantial chunk of change to go to Ctown and then stay for the week.

This. The share houses run about $1000 a night.